House of the Hanged. Mark Mills
before him seemed to look down on him now with a certain disapproval, reproaching him for his stupidity.
He hurried over and recovered the bag from the shadows. The park directly across from the north portal would give him a view down Admiralty Prospekt of Irina approaching. More importantly, he would be able to see if she was being followed. He refused to consider the possibility that she wouldn’t show at all. If the mission had failed, there would be no second chances.
He was ten yards shy of the north doors when he saw them enter the cathedral directly in front of him. They weren’t in uniform, they didn’t need to be. The way they were moving, the arrogant purpose in their step, marked the pair out as Chekists. Tom’s instinct was to turn and flee, but he knew they would have the south and west doors covered by now.
Extending an upturned hand, he carried on towards the two men.
‘A few roubles, comrades,’ he pleaded pathetically, ‘for a veteran of Tannenberg.’
Mention of the bloody battle didn’t curry any sympathy.
‘Papers,’ snapped the smaller of the two Chekists.
‘I haven’t eaten in days.’
Not so far from the truth, but Tom found his hand slapped aside.
‘Papers!’
‘Leave him,’ growled the other. ‘You heard what Zakharov said – he has a beard.’
Zakharov. There was no time to process this news – or to give thanks for the last-minute precaution of changing his appearance – as two more men bowled into the building through the north doors. They were wearing leather jackets crossed with cartridge belts. The taller of the two Chekists turned to them.
‘Neratov, you guard the door.’
Any suspicions that Neratov might have had of Tom were dispelled when the smaller Chekist shoved him dismissively aside. The scruffy man with the bag in his hand had evidently been checked and cleared. While the three other policemen fanned out into the cathedral Tom crept sheepishly past the glowering Neratov and out through the doors.
In his haste to put the danger behind him, he slipped on the icy steps leading down from the pillared portico. Falling hard, he felt something go in his wrist. He bit back a cry, not wishing to draw attention to himself.
He glanced up and down Admiralty Prospekt: the pavements were deserted, just an isvochik heading towards him, drawn by a shaggy white horse. It was free, and Tom waved it down, almost laughing at the absurdity of his good fortune.
The coachman, muffled in furs, was bringing the small sledge to a halt when Tom heard the shout.
‘Stop him!’
It came from the cathedral. The tall Chekist stood dwarfed between two pillars of the north portico, waving furiously.
‘Stop him!’ he bellowed again. ‘He’s an enemy of the Soviet!’
With a flick of the driver’s reins the sleigh took off. Tom stumbled after it, unable to get any meaningful purchase on the compacted snow, falling quickly behind as the horse’s trot became a canter. Realizing the futility of the pursuit, he cut left across the street and disappeared into the park on the far side.
Overhead, a half-moon hung in a cloudless sky, and even beyond the pool of light thrown by the street lamp he could still pick a route with ease. Unfortunately, this also meant that his pursuers would have no trouble following his deep tracks in the snow.
That first lone shout had now become a chorus at his back. Outnumbered, the only thing he had in his favour was that he had prepared himself for such conditions. The snow in the park was deep, thigh-deep in places, just as it had been in Finland. Before leaving Helsinki, he had trained hard in anticipation of their flight from Russia, pushing himself on occasions to almost masochistic extremes. Not only was he in better physical condition than he’d ever been, but he had also accustomed himself to the hunger and the cold until his mother would barely have recognized the lean, gaunt spectre of her own son before her. He had grown a beard, and he had learned to stoop convincingly, knocking a few inches off his height, making him one of the crowd.
‘Come on, you bastards,’ Tom muttered to himself. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’
What they had, it turned out, was guns. And they weren’t afraid to use them.
The first few shots ripped through the skeletal branches above his head. He assumed they were warning shots until he heard something whistle past his left ear, death missing him by a matter of inches.
Crouching, he drove his legs on, knowing that every hard yard gained now would equate to three or four when the snow-bound park gave way to Admiralty Quay. He lost a little of his advantage when he was suddenly pitched forward into the snow, as if shoved hard in the back by a phantom hand. Scrabbling to his feet, he figured the bullet must have struck the bag slung over his shoulder, embedding itself in the jumble of clothing he’d put together for Irina.
A primeval impulse to survive, to live beyond his twenty-two years, took complete possession of him now. He ploughed on like a man sprinting through a waist-high sea to save a drowning child. Pleasingly, the shouts of his pursuers had dimmed almost to silence by the time he finally broke free on to Admiralty Quay.
He knew that the frozen stillness of the river lay just beyond the low wall ahead of him. Should he risk it, skittering across the ice, out in the open? No. He bore left, away from the Admiralty building, his legs burning, but with a lot of life still left in them.
Run, he told himself. Settle your breathing and stretch out your stride. He would take the next street on the left, head south, lose himself in the back streets around the Mariinsky Theatre.
Tom glimpsed the revolver in the other man’s hand a split-second before they collided. Both had been slowing to make the turn, but the head-on impact still sent them sprawling in a tangle of limbs.
The gun. Where was it? No longer in the man’s hand, but within reach. Tom lashed out with his foot, slamming the heel of his boot into the man’s head, catching him in the temple. This bought him a precious second, enough to give him a fighting chance. The two of them scrabbled and clawed for possession of the weapon, the lancing pain in Tom’s damaged wrist numbed by the panic.
The moment he realized he’d been beaten to the prize, the Cheka man froze. Keeping the revolver trained on him, Tom scrabbled to his feet.
‘Please . . .’ said the man, raising a futile hand to stave off the bullet.
Tom glanced down Admiralty Quay: vague smudges of movement in the distance, drawing closer, but too far off yet to pose a threat.
Tom looked back at the man. He was young, Tom’s age, his lean, handsome face contorted with fear, and in those pitiful eyes Tom saw everyone who had ever been cruel to him, everyone who had ever hurt him, deceived him, betrayed him.
‘Vade in pacem,’ he said quietly.
Go in peace – the same parting words of Latin which the priest had offered to him in the chapel at St Isaac’s just minutes before. He didn’t know why they sprang from his mouth; he didn’t care.
He was gone, disappearing down the darkened street, flying now on adrenaline wings.
The apartment building was a drab five-floored affair on Liteiny Prospekt, near the junction with the Nevsky. The grey morning light didn’t do it any favours.
Tom watched and waited from across the street, one eye out for Cheka patrols, or anyone else showing undue interest in the apartment building. He had got rid of the bag, abandoning it in the coal cellar where he’d passed a sleepless night, swaddled in the clothing intended for Irina. The bullet that had knocked him flat in the park was now in his hip pocket. He had tried to think of it as his lucky charm, but how could it be? If Irina wasn’t dead by now, she would be soon. He was too much of a realist to believe otherwise.
He knew how the Cheka operated; months of tracking their